Or, rather, that one time he crossed the line and it looked like he was going to split Henrik Zetterberg’s brain like a melon. In the end, it was only the Detroit forward’s helmet that cracked as the final buzzer sounded in Game 1, when Weber suddenly lost his marbles and delivered a glancing punch at the back of Zetterberg’s head and then rammed his face towards the glass as though it were a wrestling turnbuckle.

Weber was fined US$2,500 for the incident but, in WWE fashion, the league looked the other way and the Nashville Predators defenceman avoided suspension. What he could not avoid was a new reputation as the NHL’s villain.

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It is a role that seems to suit the grizzly-bearded Weber’s appearance, but it goes against his hockey DNA.

Talk to teammates, coaches, even opponents, and the consensus is the 6-foot-4, 234-pound Weber is a mean and nasty player who enjoys a hard-hitting, physical game, but that he does so within the legal limits. Slashes? Cross-checks? Cheap shots? Up until Game 1, it was not part of his repertoire.

“You rarely see him do things like that,” Red Wings forward Valtteri Filppula said. “Most of the time he plays clean.”

“I think it was a dirty thing that he did to Hank,” Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom said. “Besides that, I don’t know if he is a dirty player. Not from my recollection. He’s just a tough guy to play against. He plays hard.”

The facts seem to back this up. Weber has never been suspended. He was tied for 60th among defencemen with 46 penalty minutes this season — nearly half as many as Boston’s Zdeno Chara and only four more than Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson. And the last time he fought in a regular-season game, according to hockeyfights.com, was on Dec. 22, 2009.

And yet, after his Game 1 incident with Zetterberg and a fight against Todd Bertuzzi that followed in Game 2, Weber arrived in Detroit on the weekend as though he were the bastard son of Claude Lemieux. He was booed during the pre-game introductions and every time he touched the puck. One fan held a sign that read “Big Bert Make Weber Hurt.”

But it was Weber who inflicted the most pain in the 3-2 win, scoring a power-play goal nearly three minutes into the first period and finishing the game with three hits and three blocked shots in more than 27 minutes of ice time.

“He’s an honest player,” Predators head coach Barry Trotz said. “When you talk about being a pro, he’s a pro. His No. 1 job is being a hockey player … He’s one of those guys who wants to be the best at his position.”

The Predators captain might have succeeded this year. While Karlsson set a new modern-day bar for offensive production, the Norris Trophy recognizes the best all-around defenceman. And with 19 goals and 49 points, 177 hits, 140 blocked shots and a plus-21 rating, it is difficult to argue Weber will not at least be a finalist for a second straight year.

“Well, he’s 6-4 every shift, not every second shift,” said Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock, when asked what makes Weber so difficult to play against. “He’s 220 [pounds], he’s got a skill set, he’s got a bomb [of a shot], he’s competitive, he’s getting better every day. What I like about him is if you know the kid at all and know how he’s brought up, then you know. To me that’s what you want out of leadership, you want quality people with integrity doing the right thing each and every time, and they make their teammates better and their organization better. And that’s what he is.”

When former Predators defenceman Cody Franson was a rookie, he was invited to live at Weber’s apartment. When Alexander Radulov came back from Russia this season, Weber was one of the first to call and ask if Radulov needed anything.

“He [helped] me a lot when I first got here,” said Radulov. “I’ve known him since I got drafted. We’ve been friends since then.”

Martin Erat has also known Weber since he was a rookie. When asked what, if anything , has changed about him during these last seven years, Erat joked, “He wasn’t 240 when he started in this league.”

Now that he is that big, he is starting to use it to his advantage, like Chris Pronger and Zdeno Chara. Maybe this is part of the transformation. Maybe Weber is learning that there are benefits to being the bad guy. After all, intimidation can be a positive factor in hockey.

Or maybe, as the league suggested as its reason for not suspending Weber, this was a one-off thing from a player who probably wishes he had handled it differently.

“I don’t think he’s mean and nasty,” said Predators GM David Poile, whose primary job this summer is to try and re-sign Weber to a long-term contract. “I just think he’s willing to go. He’s big and strong. If he has to play physical, he’ll play physical.

“This is what you hope when you step to the podium and draft an 18-year-old that somewhere down the line they’re going to blossom. With Shea, it’s been that type of development. Now, at the ripe young age of 26, he’s one of the top defencemen in the league and a leader of our hockey club. It’s like the story has been written perfectly so far.”

It is a story, however, that includes a chapter that you would rather skip over.